


halfway through forever and a day

by penguistifical



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, expect the Flesh and the End to come calling, if you'd take a body and years that weren't yours to take
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:53:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24212425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguistifical/pseuds/penguistifical
Summary: “Listen, Peter. Make a bargain with me. Apparently taking another body doesn’t sit well with some. A certain...visceral response? Come by my house tonight and see me through to the morning. In return, I have something I’m very sure you’ll like."
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 21
Kudos: 136





	halfway through forever and a day

**Author's Note:**

> cw: implied violence off page, body horror and some canon typical violence and description of blood on page.

Something on the Head of the Institute’s desk is calling to Peter. 

He tries to determine what it is while listening absently to James tell him about his evening plans, which, this evening, happen to include murder.

Peter doesn’t sense anything unusual from the stacks of papers on the desk, though he knows if your average person were to take a look at them they’d think the writer a clever novelist- or insane.  
  
There’s an older tape recorder and a pile of tapes taking up half the desk, but it’s not those, either.

The cleavers are new. They’re neatly arrayed in a case that's carefully lined with velvet and burlap, and the blades gleam malevolently in the brightly lit office.  
  
“Captain Lukas, I really wish you’d attend.” James says, mulishly.

“I hear you. You’re jumping ship again, as it were.” Peter says, lifting his gaze from the knives.

James chuckles. “Indeed. And high time, too.”

He extracts something from a desk drawer, and leans forward earnestly.

“Listen, Peter. Make a bargain with me. I have something I’m very sure you’ll like.”

Whatever James is holding right now is exactly what’s been crooning a siren song to Peter since he set foot in the office, the comforting drone he associates with the fading of the raucous sounds of the world as wraps himself in the Lonely.

It’s a small black box, but he can’t get a good look at it. James is passing it between his hands carefully like a one cup shell game.

“I’m jumping ship, as you said, tonight. I have my new body. I’m just thinking about an additional safeguard.”

Peter gestures towards the case of cleavers on the desk. “You’re not using those, are you?”  
  
James promptly closes the case. “No,” he says, voice heavy with distaste, as if he’d also like to slam a lid on the question. “Nothing so indelicate. My preparations are elsewhere.”

The current Head of the Institute resumes toying with the small box, not ever allowing Peter to see it completely, just giving him small glimpses. 

“The cleavers are for after,” James says. “Apparently taking another body doesn’t sit well with some. A certain...visceral response, yes? I’ll deal with most of it, just as I did every other time. I don’t expect more than a mild inconvenience, but I think a little extra security might be warranted.”

Peter raises his eyebrows. “You seem to think you’ll have things well in hand. Why bother me if it’s just a bit of, how did you put it, ‘extra security?’”

James drops the small box back into his drawer, and then slams both his hands on the desk. “ _This cannot fail.”_ he breathes, but then quickly relaxes, resuming his mantle of feigned uncaring and confidence. “Besides, first few times lucky, and all that. Look, come by my house tonight, see me through to the morning.”

Peter doesn’t take the hand James is offering. “And I will be getting?”

James shrugs, but the stiff motion only shows how tensely he’s holding himself. “Like I said, I think you’ll rather like what I found for you. I’ve been saving it.”

“Seems a gamble on my part, if you won’t even show me whatever it is.”

But Peter’s gazing towards the desk drawer as he speaks. He scowls when he looks up to meet James’s knowing smug smile. James, the bastard, knows that Peter wants that box.  
  
“You do like gambling and wagers, Peter. But if that’s not enough, let me also offer you this: my next Archivist, whoever they are, will interact with you only on terms that you and I set together. If you’re planning something, they won’t set out to ruin your rituals without you and I having met about it first. No more Gertrudes.”

Peter suspects there’s something in the wording that James will twist later, but it does sound good. 

“Do we have a deal, then?” James asks.

“When do you want me to come by?” 

“Drop by in the evening, if you would.” James grins with all the satisfaction of a cat enjoying a bowlful of cream. “I’ll be a new man by then.”

“You’re not expecting any difficulties with that part of things?”

James’s grins sharpens slightly, now more predatory, the cat having caught a mouse but having not yet killed it. “None. He’s so _very_ curious. I know he’ll come along nicely.”

“He’s trusting, then.”

James laughs.”Not at all! But his desire to know and learn is just slightly greater than that of his self-preservation. A lovely trait that I've tried to cultivate. He’s suspicious, but I’ll let him know I have something to show him. He’ll trot right up, I’m sure of it.”

“And am I allowed to see the new "suit" before tonight?” 

“Of course. You walked past him on your way into the...ah, no, you just fogged your way in here, didn’t you.” James gestures towards the door. “Put your head outside the office, Elias is right there.”

“Trying to eavesdrop.” Peter concludes approvingly.

It _would_ be interesting to see this one before James becomes him. 

Peter makes a show of catching James’s eye, and then knocks on the office door as if asking permission to enter the outside world. James’s chuckle follows Peter out as he wanders into the hall.

As promised, there’s a young man outside leaning nonchalantly up against the wall. He appears to be diligently working in a notepad, but Peter can see that while half of the paper is neatly filled out with what looks to be a tidy list, the other half is a drawing of some kind of bird, and the man is lovingly outlining feathers.

He slams the notepad down as Peter leaves the office, and jumps upright. He quickly stammers out, “Sorry, Mr. Wright, I was, I was just finishing your list for the incoming p-...” he trails off, seeing that it’s not his boss, but Peter. “Who _are_ you? And how did you get into the office? None of us saw you go by.”

Peter smiles at his bold curiosity. “I’m just a visitor.” he answers blithely. 

Elias rolls his eyes. “Well, that answered nothing. You’ve definitely been here before.” He smiles at Peter in a way that invites him to smile back, to share the joke, to laugh with him.

“Have you worked here long, then?” Peter asks.

“Eh, long enough. I came to give a statement, I never left.” He clearly wants to ask Peter more about how he mysteriously teleported into the office, but a sideways glance at the still open office door shows that he doesn’t want to ask anything further while James is listening in. Wise man.

With a conspiratorial nod towards James in the office, Peter silently gestures for Elias to pass him the notepad, asking to see his bird drawing. Elias grins and spins it around to show him.  
  
“Very nice,” Peter tells him quietly.

“It’s my best one yet. I’ve been practicing.” Elias answers, looking up at him with bird-bright dark eyes with dark circles underneath, the telltale badge of having given a statement.

Peter’s heard on occasion from James the impossibility of following up with people who come to give statements, and is it any wonder? They come so trustingly to the Institute to tell their stories and leave with night terrors for the rest of their lives. Whyever would they trust again?

But this one, Elias, he’s stayed in the archives, and he’s still buzzing with curiosity about who Peter might be. He’s clearly at least slightly touched by the gaze of the Eye. No wonder James wants this one.

Peter can sense a faint susceptibility to Loneliness as well. It’s true that James has a habit of recruiting those who will not be missed.

He gently pushes the notepad back. “It’s lovely,” he tells Elias.

Elias makes a curious gesture as if he’s actually catching the compliment from the air, and putting it into his pocket. “Well, thanks. I’d really better get back to work, though. I can always finish it another day.”

Peter returns thoughtfully to the office.

“Did you like him?” James asks, in the way he might ask if Peter likes his new cufflinks.  
  
“He seemed a bit scatterbrained to be working here, really.” Peter replies. “Hope you won’t be inheriting any part of that.”

“Oh, I imagine his work will become quite focused in the near future.” James says, and then leans forward, smile dropping. “Will you accept? Protect me tonight, in exchange for what I offer? You’ve not said yes.”

Peter’s been holding off for the pleasant entertainment of watching the other avatar get increasingly annoyed, but James is starting to border on the desperate.  
  
“I know your ship’s schedule,” James continues, voice faintly strained. “I _know_ you could be there tonight. Do you want me to grovel?”

“I’d enjoy that,” says Peter. “But save that for another time. I’ll probably be there tonight. If I show up, I’ll expect everything you’ve promised me.”

He steps backwards into the Lonely. The last thing he sees before the world swirls into fog is James giving him a mocking sailor’s salute  
  


* * *

  
It’s just before midnight when Peter steps lightly from fog onto the damp grass in front of James’s house. He knows where James lives, of course. He’s been invited over before - far more times than he’s actually accepted the invitation, but the rejection has never seemed to daunt James.  
  
He’s not entirely sure what he’d been expecting, but it’s not to see two people already on James’s porch.

One is a scruffy young man, swaying back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock. The other person is harder to make out from how they’re crouched by the door, methodically picking the lock.

Peter loudly clears his throat. “Can I help you two with something, then?”

The lockpicker ignores this, but Scruffy turns to him, his face forlorn.  
  
“It’s an impossible number.” he tells Peter, fretfully. “Shouldn’t exist. Shouldn’t have added up that way. Needs correcting.” He wrings his hands as he speaks, and when he finishes, coughs. Sand pours out of his mouth, falling down his chest but trickling into nothing before it can land. “Flipping the hourglass like this, it’s, it’s…”  
  
“Perverse?” Peter offers, and the man brightens, sand glinting in his smile.

“Yes, you understand. Come with us.”

Peter holds out a hand. “I think I can help.”  
  
The other man reaches out trustingly, placing his palm lightly on Peter’s. His eyes widen as Peter’s grip tightens on his wrist and the fog rises up around them like a constrictor. The avatar of the End stops swaying back and forth and stands perfectly upright, looking at Peter with shock. One last single grain of sand falls from his lips and vanishes just after he does.

Peter’s awareness of the world returns a heartbeat later, just in time to hear the bolts on the front door click as the lock pops.

“I wouldn’t,” he says pleasantly to the woman with her hand on the door handle. “Unless you’d like to try to find your friend? I prefer not to take people in pairs, but if you’d like to go looking for him, I can arrange that.”

“I didn’t know him,” she says, looking Peter over, and settling into a stance he’s seen in sailors squaring for a fistfight. “We just have something in common, is all.”

She holds out her hand, and Peter thinks for a second she might actually be accepting his offer to go into the Lonely. But she’s not looking at him anymore, she’s examining her skin as if consulting a guidebook.  
  
She has a small but exceptionally intricate tattoo of a heart inked onto her wrist that seems, with her pulse underneath, to be beating.

And, suddenly, she relaxes, and even smiles at him. 

“Not today,” she says, a bit ruefully. “And not here, for either of us. Will you not allow me to enter? Are you not also here to try to correct this undeath? It’s probably almost sorted by now, anyway.” she coaxes.

“No.” Peter reaches for the door, holding it closed. “I’ll wish you a good evening, but if you aren’t away from this house in the next few seconds, I’ll have to take you away myself.”

She shrugs, collects her tools, and casually strolls away.  
  
Peter watches her walk out of sight as he weaves the Lonely around James’s house. A sheath and shield of fog, to be dissipated in the morning like bad dreams.  
  
If any further avatars of Terminus come calling, they won’t find this place.

Unfortunately it’s become a beacon for any other servants to the Lonely, but since Peter’s here it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll come to investigate.

The timekeeper of Terminus did a neat job picking the lock, Peter muses as he enters. He doesn’t know what James plans to do with the house, but at least he won’t need to replace any part of the latch.

As he closes the door, the iron abattoir stench of carnage rises up to meet him, and he reels for a moment before regaining his head.  
  
He also realizes, in the way he sometimes can tell when people are around, that there’s a stranger in James’s house.

He rushes through the entry hall, the lockpicker’s casual _“It’s probably almost sorted,”_ playing in his head. He nearly attacks the man he finds in the kitchen before recognizing it’s James in his new body.

James is ashen-faced and slumped wearily over the kitchen table. The cleaver he’s tightly clutching gleams even as blood slides off the blade to drip thickly onto the floor.

The table is neatly set with a bottle of wine and two glasses, an elegant contrast to the butchery of the rest of the room. 

Several of the other cleavers are scattered around in corners, probably where James had thrown them at the mindless agents of the Flesh, sending up great fountains of ichor that coat the walls.

The corners still all hold slightly pulsating and twitching piles of viscera and offal, but their presence is fading as the grip of the Lonely takes hold over the house. The piles of meat slowly dwindle in chunks as if feeding on themselves.

James has a curious circle around him of short rib cages intertwined with each other in a gruesome braid, as if they grew up to encase him before he scythed them down. Peter knows that James does rather like to refer to himself as the heart of the Institute, but, listening to James’s stuttering breaths and seeing his glassy stare, Peter decides to save the quip for another time.

“Glad that you made it,” James gasps out. “Forgive me my lacking hospitality.”

The kitchen sufficiently deFleshed, Peter steps into the room. “I hope you weren’t inviting any avatars of the End over for a celebratory supper. I turned them away.”

James offers him the ghost of a smirk. “They didn’t present their calling cards? There’s no social niceties these days.” 

“Well, you do keep choosing to stay around and see these new days, so you’ve only yourself to blame.”

“Mm. Can you do something about that man by the stairs? I’m afraid I can’t touch him.”

Peter wanders over to see and instinctively recoils at what seems like a drone of the Hive. He’d never bring such a group into the Lonely. This person is wearing a jacket coated in beetles, pinned to thick fabric as if decadently displaying jewels.  
  
“Tried to put a needle into me,” James calls weakly, from the kitchen. “I don’t want to get too close and find out what happens if I get pricked. Don’t worry, they’re of the End.”  
  
Peter breathes in a hint of the ether that this person is wearing like perfume, and agrees: one last avatar of Terminus who had somehow made it into the house. Apparently he'd locked the door behind them after entering to make it more difficult for anyone inside to quickly escape. A nasty ploy, but Peter can appreciate that.

There’s a handful of scattered specimen cards by them, all names and dates with a pinhole up top: labels to be neatly placed showing exactly when something had lived and died. The nearest card reads _Elias Bouchard_ and has tonight’s date underneath. There’s one sticking out from underneath the man's leg that Peter wonders whether, if he pulls it out, it will say ‘James’ or ‘Jonah.’

“They didn’t do a very good job sticking you,” Peter answers, nudging the prone avatar with a foot. 

“Well, I did hit them upside the head rather hard. That probably inconvenienced him slightly. _Can you…”_ Whatever James was about to say, the compulsion won’t wrap around the words as he breaks off, groaning.

“Worn out, old man?” Peter mocks, and chuckles at the indignant squawk from the kitchen. “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it, as a kindness to my elders.”

He reaches down and grabs the unconscious bug collector by the lapels, and flings him into one of the last remnants of the Flesh. There’s a noise that Peter’s going to think about the next time he enjoys a milkshake, but then the last avatar of the End is gone.

Peter returns to the kitchen and sits down across from James. “Are you expecting any more company? This is a livelier party than I was led to believe.”

James shakes his head. “Any group of two or more is too lively a party for you. No, everything looks quiet now, thanks to that trick of yours. And, once I've been in the body for a night, I'm not bothered further.” He gestures down at himself. “What do you think?”

“You look awful.” Peter says honestly.

James, no, Elias, as Peter knows he’ll want to be called now, is pale and trembling. He’s spattered with what can’t possibly be entirely his own blood or he’d be unconscious. His gray eyes seem to be standing out especially with the dark circles underneath, but perhaps that’s just because Peter had a chance to see this body's original eye color earlier.

“Yes, well, forgive me if I’m not looking my best at the moment.” Elias drawls, and struggles to sit upright in his chair. He fumbles for the wine glasses, and manages to pour out two drinks without spilling too much of what is no doubt a lavishly expensive vintage.   
  
“As James, I promised Elias this afternoon that we’d share a drink." Elias explains. "Something special, I told him, and I’ve had this bottle for a long while. Besides,” Elias says, satisfaction leeching into his voice. “I can’t toast my success?”

He raises his glass to Peter and shakily drinks. Elias manages a single sip before suddenly clutching his head.  
  
The wineglass falls out of his nerveless fingers and smashes.  
  
Elias, shaking slightly, watches the dark stain of the wine spreading like veins across his floorboards to blend with the faintly remaining traces of Fleshly ichor.

“Just like how you remember it?” Peter asks, and Elias shudders, and wrenches his gaze from the floor.

“No.” Elias says shortly. “Not at all.” He nods towards the other wine glass, but doesn’t risk trying to pass it across the table. “This is yours.”

“I prefer to drink alone,” Peter demurs.  
  
“You will be. I’m not having any more.”

Peter shrugs and swirls the wine. It’s far too fine a red to waste on Viscera. Hopefully the Flesh enjoyed its send off drink, as it’s mostly gone from the room at this point. Oddly, the stains on Elias are remaining.

“That was...significantly worse than last time,” Elias mutters, still rubbing his temple. “Next time is going to require detailed planning.”

Peter rises and walks gingerly around the broken glass and wine-stained floorboards to Elias. He pries off Elias’s arm and gently examines where he’s been holding his head. 

“I had to knock him out.” Elias says quietly. 

“Who, the fellow with the pins?” Peter asks, carefully running his fingers around a lurid bruise.

“No. I mean, I had to knock out Elias. It makes things easier.”

“Left you with a headache when you took over, seems like.” Or more possibly, mildly concussed, but Peter expects that Elias will heal from that.

“Yes, it’ll scar, I suppose. But that’s fitting, that my first mark in my new body should come from the old. A bit of a memento. And I’ll be fine when I can get back to the Archives tomorrow. I thought it might be safer out here for the night." Elias chuckles. "I didn’t fancy my chances challenging the Flesh in Elias’s flat, and the Archives are, ah, too well known, as it were.” he finishes and runs a hand through his hair, hissing in disgust when he encounters some piece of gristle that must have flown up when he slashed down with a cleaver.

For all his casual posturing, Elias can’t cover how near he is at the moment to collapse. Peter hadn’t thought he’d ever be seeing him so vulnerable.  
  
“Do you think you can make it upstairs?” Peter asks, and rolls his eyes seeing that Elias is clearly about to lie, and just as clearly not going to be getting up from that table any time soon.  
  
Ignoring Elias’s feeble attempts to bat his arms away, Peter scoops him up, carrying Elias in his arms over the mess on the floor, stepping carefully over where the Flesh had been pulsing.

“Unnecessary,” Elias comments, but leans his head back against Peter’s chest and closes his eyes.  
  
“Don’t get blood on my coat,” Peter returns, which Elias chooses not to answer.  
  
Any dried flecks are actually fading from Peter, the same way they slowly waned from the floor. Blood is only clinging bitterly to Elias, the one who personally wronged the Flesh. It’s probably best to try and get it off him, and so Peter carries Elias upstairs into his bathroom, fills the tub, and helps Elias undress and carefully lay back in the hot water.

Peter catches Elias giving him an odd look while he’s rolling up his sleeves.

“What?”

“I didn’t ask for this when I made a bargain with you,” Elias says slowly.  
  
Peter doesn’t know or care what point Elias is dancing around, and from Elias’s huff of amusement as he plucks that thought from Peter’s mind, that seems to be the right answer.

“Beholders always make things complicated.” Peter says shortly, rolling up his other sleeve and getting a washcloth.

“Life’s so much more fun that way, Peter.” Elias sighs, and stretches in the tub. “Don’t touch the clothes, I’ll burn them later.”

“I assume you have a place to do that quietly?”

“Of course, it’ll be when I’m also burning down this house. It’ll be neater that way, and an explanation for James.”

Peter doesn’t ask where the body of James Wright is at the moment, just kneels down by the tub and begins attending to the body currently in front of him. Elias murmurs contentedly as Peter slowly runs the cloth over the dried blood specks that coat Elias’s arms and neck.

The way steam rises from the water and lingers like the fog, Peter feels almost pleasantly at home.

“Don’t drown,” he warns Elias, who has now sunk into the water up to his chin, and has his eyes closed again. Elias only lets out a noncommittal hum and turns his head so that his cheek is resting in Peter’s hand.

Peter lets him keep it there, softly exploring the curve of cheekbone in this new body with his fingertips as he scoops handfuls of water over Elias’s hair. Peter does like the new curls, rather, but he won’t admit that out loud. Vanity has always followed Elias from body to body. He gives one curl a gentle tug and feels Elias smile against his palm. 

Peter leans over the tub, and tilts up the other man’s head so that he can brush his lips over Elias’s pulse. Elias sighs, apparently still very fond of that.  
  
Peter lingers, running his lips over Elias’s collarbone, breathing out into the hollow of his neck, learning this new shape.

“You’ll get your excuse of a beard wet,” Elias says tartly, and gasps when Peter drags his stubble up Elias’s neck to kiss behind his ear, and gasps again when Peter nips his earlobe.

It’s intimate, holding Elias’s trust for this moment, watching him slowly run a hand over his new stomach and chest to test new sensations and sensitivities. He's also very aware that the beholder is injured and exhausted in his new body.

Peter somewhat regretfully lets Elias know that he’s clean and should probably get out of the water.  
  
He helps a very languid avatar of the Eye out of his bath and into one of James’s old robes.

Elias rouses a bit when Peter helps him onto his bed. “Your payment, it’s on the dresser. I brought it in here earlier.” As strongly wrapped in the Lonely as the house is at the moment, Peter hadn’t noticed the small black box James had teased him with earlier.

Peter raises his hands in feigned appreciation. “How foresighted of you to think that we’d end up in here.”

“Yes, whoever would have thought,” Elias says, gently mocking them both.  
  
Peter settles Elias comfortably onto the bed, and takes a towel to gently pat down his wet hair. Elias scowls at being moved around like a doll, but reaches up afterwards and briefly presses Peter’s hand to his face.

Once Elias is dry and dozing, Peter reaches for the box to see what his services are worth. At least, since Elias is asleep, he won’t be able to see Peter’s reaction if this reward turns out to be a trick to teach him the folly of gambling.

Peter grins unabashedly when he opens his gift, and reveals the container to be a ring box.  
  
He continues smiling with crooked pleasure as he examines the small trinket of his personal god, drinking in its story. This wedding ring has been so coated in past tears as to remind him faintly of the ocean. Lovely. Whoever originally bought it was betrayed, and never trusted again. They’d kept the ring to themselves as a promise to stay apart, inviting in the Lonely to make a home in their heart.

Peter wants to wear it, but it’s too small for him.

He turns to offer Elias genuine thanks, and frowns.

Elias is sleeping fitfully, and is starting to look grayish again. It could be fallout from fighting the Flesh and the End, or sickness and pain from the new body he’d attacked in order to inhabit. If Peter’s being honest with himself, it could very well be the increased presence of the Lonely, but that’s what’s keeping them both safe at the moment, so he’s not going to dismiss their protection.

He turns the wedding ring over and over in his hand and watches Elias shake his head, murmuring something too quiet to hear.

The life of the person who used the name ‘James Wright’ is now effectively destroyed. Elias won’t be able to be friendly with any of James’s acquaintances, never in the same way or with the same warmth. The person that Elias was didn’t have close friends, and the people that previously enjoyed his company won’t like this new strange and sober Elias.

Jonah will always be estranged for the secrets he keeps. He’ll always be separate from the people who were dear to him in his own life, getting further and further away from them as the years go on.

Elias lets out a shaky breath like his heart is being torn from him. “Barnabas,” he breathes out, reaching into the air and grasping nothing. “ _Barnabas_.”

Peter thinks that if he could love anybody, he might love Elias.

He also promised to see him safely through the night, so he reaches out and tousles Elias’s damp curls. The other man startles awake, freed from nightmares.

“That didn’t look very restful,” Peter says thoughtfully, as Elias struggles to get control of himself.

“This body made a statement.” Elias growls, his hand on his chest.

“Didn’t you know?”

“Yes, of course. I know everything about who he was. I just didn’t realize I’d be susceptible.” Elias waves a hand dismissively. “It’ll fade as the body heals, I’m sure. I didn’t plan on sleeping tonight, anyway.” His eyes narrow. "And I think some of that dream was due to you, as well."

Peter crosses to the other side of the bed, taking his jacket off. It’s a long unspoken signal between them that means Peter won’t promptly fade into the Lonely, that he’s going to stay for a while. 

Peter lays down next to Elias, making himself comfortable on astonishingly soft sheets. 

“Come over here,” he says, crooking a finger to Elias who is looking out at him from memories centuries away.

Elias slowly moves himself into Peter’s arms and tucks his head underneath Peter’s chin. Peter drapes his coat over both of them, and Elias petulantly puts his arm through one of the sleeves as if to further ensure that the Lonely’s servant won’t slip off. Peter merely chuckles.  
  
"Thank you for coming tonight." Elias whispers. "For not leaving me."  
  
Peter doesn't, _can't_ answer that, but holds Elias tightly and slowly rubs the back of his neck, trying to get him to relax.  
  
It’d be relaxing if Elias would stop shifting and resettling himself. “It just feels different,” he complains, when Peter frowns at him. 

Peter eventually just bundles him in the coat to make him stop moving around. Elias rests his head on Peter’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. 

“That sounds the same, at least.” he says, and Peter gives him a quick squeeze. “Do you like your ring?”

“I do.” Peter answers. Elias sneers up at him for his twisting of a wedding vow, but tilts his head obligingly so that Peter can press a kiss to his uninjured temple. Peter wonders if he can casually ask Elias to wear the ring to see what it looks like on him.

“I had no idea you felt that way, Elias.” Peter tells him snidely, and watches Elias’s lips quirk up. “Did you want to marry into the Lukases? You should have told me something before surprising me with a wedding ring.”

“Oh, shut up. I wouldn’t give you something so tawdry, so garish, so…”

So _appropriate_ , Peter thinks, but neither of them say it.  
  


* * *

  
The fog and Peter Lukas fade away as the sun rises.

Elias brings a set of carefully wrapped cleavers back to the Institute. Though he didn’t take the time to wipe them down, the blades are as clean as if they’ve been lovingly polished for hours.  
  
He also brings back a wedding ring. Peter had left it on the pillow, the first thing Elias had seen when he woke up.

Elias doesn’t want to wear it, but he does want to keep it. It’s Peter’s, after all, even if Elias is holding onto it for the avatar of the Lonely. He can try returning it to Peter when they next see each other.

Only the cleavers are restored to Artefact Storage, to be withdrawn again in a handful of decades.  
  
Elias places the wedding ring in his desk drawer, nestling it on top of a crumpled drawing of a bird that will be never be finished.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes my drafts get weird working titles, for this one it was “help me live forever and I’ll remember you in my next life”
> 
> every part of this is a pretty close match for how I drafted it except for that stupid scene with the wine which I rewrote like 6 times. anyway.
> 
> thank you everybody who leaves kudos and comments, you are all great and I really do appreciate it a lot


End file.
